NJN’s Christopher Benincasa Wins National Cine Golden Eagle Award

STATEWIDE – NJN Public Television and Radio is pleased to announce that Christopher Benincasa is the recipient of a 2005 national CINE Golden Eagle Award in the Arts, Leisure & Lifestyle category for his role as producer of Peters Valley, a special edition of NJN’s State of the Arts series. This half-hour documentary covers a year in the life of Peters Valley Craft Education Center, located in the Delaware Water Gap’s National Recreation Area, and highlights the Center’s artists and artisans, its history and surrounding environment.

The CINE Golden Eagle Awards recognize excellence in documentary and other informational film and video production. Past CINE Award recipients have included Steven Spielberg and George Lucas as well as Charles Guggenheim and Frederick Wiseman. The awards will be presented at a ceremony in April 2006 in Washington, D.C.

Peters Valley also won a 2005 Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition. The original music was written and recorded by The Band Who Planted Trees. Benincasa, who played bass in the band when in college, remixed and re-engineered the music to create the soundtrack for his production of Peters Valley. He won his first Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award in 2003 in the Outstanding Magazine Format Broadcast category for an edition of State of the Arts.

Benincasa is an associate producer at NJN Public Television. He joined NJN in February 2001 as a production assistant for State of the Arts and currently produces stories for the program and works on its overall production.

A graduate of Mason Gross School of the Arts (MGSA) at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Benincasa has a strong interest in the visual arts. While earning his BFA, his work was shown in his Senior Thesis exhibit and won several awards in MGSA’s annual Art Open shows.

A native of New Brunswick, New Jersey, Benincasa currently lives in Stockton in rural Hunterdon County. When not working on his favorite television show, he still manages to make and write about art. Benincasa’s artworks include painted wood or metal, ranging from freestanding sculptures to reliefs used as wall hangings. His work will be featured in upcoming issues of American Abstract Artists Journal and The Structurist.

The executive producer for State of the Arts is Nila Aronow, and the series producer is Susan Wallner. Funding for Peters Valley was provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. The program is available on DVD, and may be purchased through NJN’s online store.